 Welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. We're really excited to have you with us today because we're going to be talking with Sarah Suarez about building your nonprofit growth, exposure, everything via social media. And this is a really big topic because Sarah, we talk about this so often. People get confounded by it. They know they need it, but they're not sure why. They don't know how. And so you're going to help us to kind of understand this so that we can be more proactive in realizing how to use this tool. So CEO of the social puzzle, I'm super excited to learn from you today, Sarah. But before we get going, I just want to remind everyone, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself is out of town. I believe she's working in the Northwest today and she'll be back with us shortly. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd is the CEO of the Raven Group. I like to call her my personal nonprofit nerd. 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As you know, with nearly 800 episodes, there's a lot that we have covered and will continue to cover. And this can be one of those fun things that helps you navigate all that information. Also, of course, find us on any of our streaming platforms as well as our podcast. So download the nonprofit show wherever you'd like to get your content. Okay, Sarah, you ready to go, my friend? I am. I'm ready. You know, I love the name of your business. Because if ever there was one word for us to associate with social media, it's got to be the word puzzle. Definitely. And I actually chose it because I wanted my business to be named something that made me happy. And my Nana was a huge puzzler. So it just every time I say it, it makes me think of her. So it makes me happy, but it also works in terms of the puzzle that social media is right now. It is. And you know, the thing about it is that it's always changing. And they're always new and different opportunities. And so it's like one of those puzzles that you can't really finish. You just need to kind of think about the next level of play. And I love, love, love your approach to this. I think just by looking at the name of your business, it gives me a lot more confidence to know what you're talking about and how to think about this in a strategic overview. And so let's start with that because I'm fascinated by this concept of having a social media strategy. Tell us what that looks like. So that is going to be based on a few things, but primarily you need to know what your organization wants to achieve through having a social media presence. And then also you want to know who your audience is, because if you don't know who you're speaking to, you don't know what channel is the best channel for you to be on. And you are speaking too broadly to really attract those who might be really drawn to your mission. So once you understand those, you create a strategy for your content and measurable goals for each piece of that content. And you look back at the analytics every month and make tweaks accordingly. So it's really a roadmap to achieve those goals that you set out in the beginning. You said something really interesting and I want to follow up with you on this. It almost seems to me like, and maybe I misheard this, but you need to be thinking about who you're already talking to as opposed to focusing on cultivating more. Is that a thing or is that in tandem that we worked on that? I think it's in tandem. Yeah. So I mean, I think most organizations, you kind of have a general audience who is passionate about your mission. For instance, an organization that I'm very passionate about is the Children's Heart Foundation. And the audience for that organization looks, you pretty much understand who is going to be supporting that mission. And so if you understand primarily the age group, you understand the demographics of your audience, then you can choose a platform that they are more likely to frequent. When thinking about developing a strategy, should you have all of that predefined or will these engagements help you define that? And I guess the reason why I'm asking this question is that, do you advocate that you have a strategy and you just stick to it? Or do you like review it every quarter? Like how flexible and flowing is this? I think it's a living document. So yeah, you need to start with a strategy, preferably you would start with a strategy. And then I like to sit down with my clients every month. Look back over what worked and what doesn't work. And then you will make tweaks accordingly because you're always going to have a post that bombs. It happens, but you learn from it. And so, and then sometimes I've had posts that shocked me and did amazingly well. So then we look at that and we think, well, how do we achieve that again? What was so great about that post that it resonated with our audience so much? So I think you make small tweaks every month to achieve that. But then I like to also look back quarterly and see if there's like an overarching change that needs to be made. You know, I love that because I think that a lot of times strategies freak people out because they end up being punitive in that you achieved or you didn't. You failed or you succeeded, right? Versus thinking about it in a different way and saying, no, this is a tool that we're going to use to help us evaluate what we can do better, what we need to change. So I really like your approach on this. I think that's smart. You know, we don't do that enough. We don't, we don't do that enough. It's such an interesting thing. Well, let's move on to another big question that we all seem to get and we seem to kind of freak out about and that is frequency. Talk to us about this. Help us like talk us off the ledge because this I think makes people want to get engaged or run the other way because they feel like they can't manage it. Right. Well, so I have a couple of thoughts about this. My first thing I'll say is that HubSpot put out something last year that said you should post two to five times a week to grow on most platforms. But I do know that a lot of nonprofits don't have a ton of bandwidth. Maybe they have a volunteer. Maybe they have a staff member that does this and multiple other things. So I think it's more important to choose a frequency that you can stick with in the long run rather than saying I'm going to post every day and then you're just completely worn out and decide this isn't for you. I think I have a client that we post twice a week for them and it works for them and there has been gradual growth. Obviously the more you post the more quickly you will grow but it's important that you have a consistency that your audience can rely on. And also I think as important as your frequency is how of post is how much you're engaging. So if you're spending time engaging with your audience rather than just putting posts up there and then it's really a one-sided conversation. It's not really a community. So I love that you said that and I want to ask a follow up question to that. When you talk about that engagement piece is it as simple as liking something or are you saying no dig deeper and say yeah we agree with this. That's why we offer this program or talk to us about how how deep we go with that engagement. Well so I would recommend and I know this might be difficult for some smaller organizations but I recommend engaging 15 minutes five days a week. And when you're doing that you're going to have two types of engagement. There's inbound which is the easy kind because it's just responding to likes and comments and direct messages. But then you're going to have outbound which I think is the most effective tool you have to grow your audience and expand your reach. And for nonprofits I usually recommend that they do that they look at hashtags that are relevant to their mission. And so if you follow those hashtags and you comment on maybe the top or the most recent post with valuable content comments about that show that you are passionate about your mission that explain more maybe about your mission and your organization. And that will attract followers who were not previously aware of you. And the other thing is if there is an organization similar to your organization and you engage and follow that organization that's a great way to get in front of an audience that's already interested in what you're doing. You know when we talk about the frequency of social media. I love that you drilled this down to being more specific. Help me to understand are those things that we should be tracking as well. Not just the bottom line number of people who follow us but but really getting a little bit more granular on this. Or do you feel like this shouldn't you know enter into the fray when we're trying to figure all this out on our strategy. Well so for strategy I would say that while follower count is is a very easy way to determine how how fast you're growing. It's not necessarily as important as your engagement rate which you should be able to see in the apps analytics and platform that you're using. Because if you look at your reach and engagement rate you can see how many people you're reaching that are in your current audience that are outside your current audience. So you're expanding your awareness and then you can see based on the engagement rate how much what you're putting out there is resonating with the people that follow you. Right I think you're right I mean you said right when we started you know it can be a mystery sometimes you think wow this post is going to do great and then other posts you'll be like what what happened. But I think those are the questions to ask you know it's it's a really interesting thing to make us better and and I think to make the tools more effective right. Right if you know what works you can do more of that and if you know it doesn't work you can figure out why it didn't work and and hopefully not do that again. Yeah exactly you know one of the things that I'm dying to talk about and spend a little bit more time with you on this Sarah is that I mean already the things that you've been talking about they can seem like a heavy lift for organizations. We all know nonprofits work with generally not enough staff not enough not enough of anything. And so then when when we hear about these things that we should be doing sometimes it just seems like it's a better thing for us to contract outside of the company versus bringing somebody in help us to understand what this might look like. Right so I would start off by saying definitely do your research look at the contractors website their social media presence and see if you feel like they would be a good fit for you. And then when you have that first call with them ask them what their services include because there are agencies out there or contractors out there who will post for you and manage your community and then they didn't necessarily create a strategy. So if that's the case I would make sure that you get a strategy before just contracting someone to create content. The other thing I think is really important to ask is are they engaging if they are not doing your engagement if they're just posting on your behalf then someone from your staff will need to pick that up. That is a really big piece of this and I think that gets missed. I mean do you see that like everybody understands that or are you like me where you're saying yeah not enough people are having that conversation. I think not enough people are having that conversation for sure and you know just as someone who does engage on behalf of nonprofits. I noticed so many other organizations that perhaps I'm engaging on the behalf of a client they never respond they never like or they just kind of posted and and leave it but I think you know once you do sort of get into engagement you'll see a lot better return on your investment. Let me follow up with this with another question and that is when you're talking about engagement in this in this realm. How confident are you as a contractor or should we be in general with that provider I mean do you see what I'm getting at like. Is there do you ever worry about misrepresenting something or using information incorrectly like what is that relationship look like with with information. That's that's so important. Yeah. And so I think it's very important that you have great communication with a contractor. I have I'm very lucky that I have great relationships with my clients. One of them is like family at this point. And so I feel like I just channel her voice when I'm responding. But if if you're not having conversations regularly they won't be able to do that. And then also you you need to make sure that that communication is open because as an outsider they don't necessarily know all of the on goings of your organization and you need to let them know what you want to promote. Right. You know it's really an interesting thing. It seems to me like that fits back all the way to the very start of our conversation is strategy. Yeah. If you don't know what you're going to be promoting or talking about coordinating with an editorial calendar. You're going to be missing a lot a lot of opportunity back in every you know how hard is that to get everybody on board with that same information. And and almost dare I say branding message. I mean it's you know not enough nonprofits. I think in the ones that I look at and work with spend enough time on this. What do you see. Well I think it's important that organizations have branding in place before they are working with specifically a social media contractor if you're working with a larger marketing agency that can do all of that for you amazing. But it's going to be difficult for someone that you're contracting to represent you if you don't have at least a one pager based on your brand. Okay smart. So that really should be in the toolbox before you begin. Right. Yeah. I like that. I think that's I think that's a I think that's wise council. Okay now the next piece of this is we understand more about what we should be getting at. What does it look like. Help us figure out the cost because for some of us this is a lot more involved than maybe we thought that engagement piece. I think a lot of times we think what are we pushing out. What are we pushing out. But we forget the engagement part. What does this look like if we're going to go invest in this. So it can it will really depend based on the person the social media manager or strategist experience. It will depend on their cost of living if you're hiring someone in the US versus outside of the US and it will definitely depend based on the services you're getting. So I recently started offering some smaller ticket items because I know that a lot of nonprofits are utilizing volunteers or interns for social media. And I think that if that's the case one thing I would say is that you should get an audit or a fully done for your strategy because those can start anywhere from 250 to a strategy can be anywhere from $500 to $1000 or more depending on the agency you go with. But if you have an audit it can at least tweak some of the issues that may be holding you back. And if you have a strategy then you'll have a roadmap. And so if an intern graduates and moves away or a volunteer decides to take time off and someone else does it. You don't really have a hard difficult transition because there's already an existing roadmap for the person who's going to take it on next. You know I'm a big fan of audits all across an organization especially with marketing. What does that time frame look like like how often should we be doing that just as a matter of course and understanding if we're working in the right direction. So for your for your social media audit I would say if you're if you're staying on top of your strategy and you're tweaking it and as you go then I think it wouldn't be too regular. I think hopefully that you're seeing the things that are not benefiting you and you're tweaking them as you go a full audit. It shouldn't be you know if you contract that out it should be done within a week and it will really help you make some changes. I did an audit for an organization recently and within a week after we had I had sent them the audit they had increased their like reach by like 80% and that's not a lot but it's still a lot for a week. Yeah yeah well I think again it goes back to what you started off with this conversation is understanding the strategy why you're doing things and it's more than just how many followers we have because I think we think that that's like the most important aspect. But that's kind of like to me it seems like you know if you look at your donor base and you're like yeah I have 5000 donors well okay yeah but only like less than 300 are actually donating with any certainty right. I mean you have to kind of put away the the glitz and the bright shiny object of a number and kind of be thinking more strategically. Definitely yeah yeah I think so and I think you know you'll see for businesses and nonprofits for a lot of different accounts they may have a ton of followers but then their engagement is so low that it's really not what I think to be the overarching goal should be for a nonprofit which is community building so if you've got a ton of followers but they're not engaged they're not truly a part of your community. I love that. Before we let you go we don't have a lot of time so many nonprofits have cyclical periods where maybe they're heavy into service or they're heavy into programming or they're heavy into fundraising or it's event season or maybe it's a national moment or national month you know dedicated to their cause or their topic. Do you ever see social media management following those those trends and being more active during these times or is that the wrong approach just being more consistent as you mentioned earlier. Well I I like consistency always but I think if that opportunity to work within say mental health this is you know mental health awareness month if you're an organization like that I think it would be a missed opportunity not to really focus on in bringing that up bringing a more awareness to your cause and sort of if you have the capacity maybe increase your post during that time. Interesting. Pardon me. It makes a lot of sense. And I have to say. It keeps going back to strategy. And you know the old fashioned word is kind of like content calendar. How often are you seeing the social media managers and that component really understanding that deeper content calendar concept for editorial and pitches or are you keeping those are you seeing those kept separate. Do you mean in terms of the calendar and how it relates to the strategy. Yeah like so many organizations especially if they're fortunate to have a marketing and communications department where they seem to work really hard and be extremely vigilant about that that editorial calendar right. You know who can they pitch stories to across the general media. But it seems to me that we were missing the boat if we're not meshing that to our social media. Right. Well and there should be places in your strategy that allow for things that are just happening. You know upcoming events and then and that is a situation when your strategy needs to be more flexible. So there's been times when I've had a client had this like really cool opportunity to come up and we have not planned for it so I just made some tweaks and move the calendar around and you just have to kind of be willing to be flexible I think. Last but not least again this time flown by how often are we should we be working with somebody that we contract with or even if we haven't somebody on our team. What does that look like. I mean with so many of our departments like in operations or fundraising. We have those Monday meetings or the Tuesday you know roundups or whatever. What should this echoes. This the space look like and how do we echo that behavior. Well if you are just starting to contract out with someone I would say that there's going to need to be a lot of communication in the big beginning as they understand your goals create your strategy get your feedback on it and then create your first content calendar. But I would say for me I speak to my clients at least once a month on the phone link on to and I have I emailed with them regularly and we also now have a flag channel so they can reach me via flag. So I think it's I just think that relationship is so important in terms of being able to achieve a success for the organization. Yeah absolutely. Okay now this is like a curve ball so get your mitt up because this this might be a really hard thing to answer. But you know in the nonprofit sector well in business in general we work on this growth model like we need to grow at you know X percent a year or quarter or in programming. What kind of growth is realistic. I mean what are some of the numbers that we should set our eyes on. Well that again it just like it very much depends on the organization so one of my clients is super niche and they have probably 800 followers but all of their followers are very specific to their very very tiny niche. They're very engaged and they've built relationships with a lot of these followers so their growth is going to be slower because there's less of an audience out there for them to even connect with. Whereas if you have say an animal rescue. I mean you have a lot bigger of a pool to grow your audience from and so it will probably grow more quickly. Interesting okay so again that's what your provider can maybe help you with to kind of figure that out to look at that to kind of understand. And again that goes back to the shiny chase of the number. You know what's what's going to be a good number and not just being caught up in that. Well I've learned a tremendous amount it's been really fun and I mentioned this to you Sarah that we were going to go by fast. There's so many questions that come in and so I want to make sure that we give Sarah's information CEO of the social puzzle. You can find Sarah's for us at the social puzzle dot com and there's some great information on that site and and I think that I like your measured approach. Sometimes we fall into these traps like oh we have to have you know we have to have this going as opposed to saying wait step back take a deep breath. Let's figure out what's the best piece of advice. I love that you you ended our time together with the story of the clients that only have 800 followers. But they're the right 800 right right. Yeah that's I mean that's what matters is your audience connected to your mission are they are they your community. Yeah it's really I think when you look at it this way it changes the game. You know it makes it a lot more manageable and I also think thoughtful because then you're not just spewing out stuff that doesn't really matter but that you take up a lot of time you burn through money. Just to get stuff posted and up but in the end of the day it's not going to be as effective and then therefore it becomes frustrating. So it's been it's been really interesting to learn from you today again the social puzzle. Hopefully if you get a chance to meet with Sarah or go to her website you'll find that this doesn't need to be a puzzle but it needs to be something that you work on. Again everybody I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy the nonprofit nerd Jarrett Ransom CEO of the Raven group will be back with us shortly. Again we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who allow us to have these conversations day in and day out where we get new perspectives we learn new things and we can be challenged to do better for our nonprofits. And those partners of ours include Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy your part time controller nonprofit thought leader fundraising Academy at National University staffing boutique nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. Hey Sarah I'm going to rethink the whole thing that we're doing for our social media strategy the nonprofit show thanks a lot. Thank you. I'm sorry. No, it's all good you know because you did bring up some things I am not immune to chasing that shiny number right. And so I like what you had to say I really did I've learned a lot and it's going to help me think about how we can be better and do better. So thank you for joining us today I really appreciate it. Thank you I'm so grateful for the opportunity to talk with you. Well it's been a lot of fun. Hey we end every episode of the nonprofit show with I'm going to call it our mantra. And that is to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow everyone.